Shatter (True Believers #4)(23)
Author: Erin McCarthy

He nodded and smiled at my friends. “Nice to meet you.”

“You, too.” Jessica turned and gave me a wicked smile, her eyebrows going up and down.

I ignored her, smiling back at Jonathon. He was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt.

He came up to the bed. “You look fantastic today. Seriously.” He held the flowers out to me. “For you, for being such a trooper.”

“Thank you.” I took them and felt a little shy and in awe. I wasn’t normally shy, but he made me feel less inclined to verbally vomit. They were bright big fuchsia roses. “They’re beautiful.”

“Pink is your favorite color, right?”

I glanced up at him, surprised. “How did you know that?” I was absolutely positive that had never been mentioned in our few conversations. “It totally is.”

He shrugged, with a grin. “Lucky guess. Because your backpack is pink, your scarf and your keychain are fuzzy pink, your boots and your comforter are pink. So you know, the volume indicated a certain preference.”

I laughed. “Good call, Sherlock.”

“Has the doctor been in?”

“Not today.” I set the flowers down and tried to reach the nightstand. “Hey, will you grab the ultrasound picture? I want to show the girls.”

“Sure.” He picked up the printout and held it out for Jessica and Rory. He put his index finger on the paper. “This is the heartbeat.”

“No way,” Jessica said. “That is a freakout.”

When Jonathon set his backpack down on the floor and bent over to get something out of it, Rory grinned at me and gave a thumbs-up. Jessica mouthed that he was cute. I shook my head, grinning. They were not being totally obvious or anything.

He stood back up, his tablet in his hand. “You can use my iPad while you’re here in the hospital to work on catching up on reading for school. You should have an Internet connection so you can access your e-mail, and your university account to read your course syllabi. Most of the reading material should be in your Google Drive, right?”

I nodded, stunned, as he set his iPad on my tray.

“I talked to your professors and explained that you were in the hospital. I had the papers from the ER so they knew it was legit. They all agreed to a week’s extension on any assignments and know not to expect you in class.”

It was like having another brain. A brain that was smarter than me and extra helpful. I was pretty sure that if I hadn’t been sick as a dog and in the presence of my friends I would have had sex with him right then and there.

“Wow, thanks, Jonathon. That’s super helpful.”

He gave a sheepish shrug. “Hell, it’s the least I can do. I feel guilty that I’m walking around perfectly fine and you’re so sick. You kind of got a raw deal on this one.”

“It’s definitely the gift that keeps on giving,” I said, wanting to tease him a little. All of this got too heavy sometimes. I wasn’t a heavy or deep kind of chick, for the most part.

Jonathon laughed. “Well, I’ll let you visit with your friends. I just wanted to check on you and give you the iPad. If it’s okay with you, I’ll stop by tomorrow.”

I nodded. “Great. Thanks.”

Then he was gone with a wave.

Jessica waved her arms in front of her face like she was overheated. “What the f**k?” she said in a stage whisper. “Girl, I think you hit the baby-daddy lottery.”

“I wasn’t even planning to play that lottery!” I protested, creeped out by the way that sounded.

“Which makes it even luckier. He’s like the sweetest thing ever. It’s disgusting.”

“He is.” I couldn’t argue with that. I kept waiting for him to be a total dick, but since that night I’d told him I was pregnant and he had made a few rude remarks he had been nothing but nice and considerate. That should be awesome, right? Except it was making it harder for some reason. It was seeming like the cruelest of all ironies.

“He clearly really cares about you,” Rory said.

But that made me scoff. “He doesn’t care about me. He’s being a decent person. He cares about the baby. I’m just the . . . what do you call it? Surrogate.”

“He didn’t have his sperm-fertilized egg implanted in you. He had sex with you.” Jessica looked bewildered by my logic.

“So?”

“So he obviously likes you on some level. Most guys would be running like the hounds of hell or the child support lawyers were after them. I think he wants a relationship with you.”

And just like that, I burst into tears.

They both went wide-eyed. “What’s wrong?” Rory asked.

“Don’t do that to me. I don’t want to have any hope. Don’t you understand? I can’t have hope. I need to have strength and independence and realism, not hope.” The days of rolling around my dorm bed giggling with my friends and grinning because I liked a new guy were over. There was no room in my life for that anymore, and it was a luxury I couldn’t afford. I was having a hard enough time fighting the urge to swoon; I didn’t need them encouraging me to be delusional. “This isn’t about me,” I added. “This is about the baby.”

They both stared at me, and nodded, like they understood, but I could see the incomprehension in their eyes.

For the first time, I realized the gap that would grow between my friends and me as surely as my baby would grow. My life was going to be completely different from theirs and I would experience feelings, pain, responsibility, love they could only know in theory. Yes, Jessica was with Riley, and he had custody of Easton, but that wasn’t a baby and he was Riley’s responsibility more than hers. It was not the same as giving birth and caring for a newborn. Rory’s focus was on getting into med school.

It made me sad and sorry that we wouldn’t walk down the same path together anymore, but at the same time, I had no regret. When Nathan had cheated on me, I had lost something precious, a faith and trust, an innocence. I couldn’t be the same fun-loving party girl anymore, and I didn’t want to be. Instead of feeling aimless, hurt, unsure, I now had a focus, a future.

A reason to set aside my personal pain and work hard, graduate on time, be a good mom.

“We’re just acquaintances,” I said. “Tied together by accident. Jonathon is being awesome, and that’s more than I ever hoped for, so it’s all good.” I gestured to the flowers. “Can you guys get some water to put these in? They’re too pretty to wilt.”